The Office

We have no official dress code at work. That fact, combined with the differing prior work experiences of the approximately 1,000 employees makes for a pretty wide spectrum of clothing visible from my cube. This week alone, I have seen people walk down the hall with:

-a trucker hat
-a faded, melon-colored tank top that should have gone in the Goodwill pile circa 1992
-patent leather dress shoes
-an absolutely enormous hickey (on a guy, so I guess the turtleneck was out...also, it's summer)

The haircuts are surprisingly conservative, though. Even among the design people...Good old corporate America.

Getting used to a new work environment makes me feel like I'm in some sort of giant psychological experiment. For instance, my office apparently doesn't staple. It took me nearly a week to find a stapler and when I did, it was hidden on such a high shelf in the supply room that I had to ask the guy in the trucker hat to get it down. Now, it's sitting on my desk, unopened, because it's ridiculously sealed and I don't yet want to go into the mailroom and ask for a butcher knife. But I love staples and hate paper clips so I'll eventually give in, I guess.

Also, the people in my cube cluster only sometimes greet each other when they arrive and leave. Other times, they just stand up and walk out with no fanfare. I don't consider myself big on small talk, but even I find this pretty weird. Whenever *I* leave, I awkwardly say, "um...goodnight" like you're supposed to.

Oh yeah, and all eleven of the people who interviewed me must interview a whole lot of people, because it was only a month between even my earliest interviews and my start date, and all of them pass me in the halls without even the vaguest glimmer of recognition. I readily admit, I'm not good with faces, but this makes me think that they hire basically everyone they interview.

I did get a paycheck though! They say money can't make you happy, and I suspect that's true in the long term, but it falls flat on its face in the short term...